


The Kiss of Life

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Supernatural - Freeform, X-Men AU - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:14:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4111962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: When 14-year-old Blaine Anderson is the victim of a hate crime, he wakes to discover he has been left with a terrible power; the ability to drain life from any living thing with a single touch.</p><p>Fearing those around him, he escapes the small town of Lima, Ohio and heads for the big city, a place where he can blend in and not be seen - or missed - by anyone. Afraid of coming into contact with any source of life, he spends the next four years on the streets in complete isolation, with nothing but his deadly ability for company, which he disguises with thick gloves and painful shyness.</p><p>And then Kurt Hummel crosses his path, a Vogue intern who might just give Blaine a reason to reach out again.</p><p>Warnings: For this chapter - violence, hate crime, homophobic slurs, accidental death, semi-graphic description of asphyxiation.</p><p>Originally posted on Tumblr January 12th 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kiss of Life

**PREFACE**

This story begins with death.

It also begins with pain.

The pain of being excluded. The pain of being ostracised and victimized, even by the people closest to you. The pain of a fist and the hard toe of a shoe. 

Most importantly, it begins with two boys, three men, a high school dance, and a lot of bravery.

**PROLOGUE**

**January 24th, 2008**

“Where did you say your dad was going to pick us up?”

The cold air rushed into Blaine’s lungs as he and Travis followed the column of students spilling out of the gym and into the night chill, the last strains of the music and heat of tightly-packed bodies chasing after them. Blaine was grateful to be out of the stuffy, stale-smelling gym, as artfully draped as it had been with paper streamers and balloons. It had been nice, and he’d had a good time - they both had - but now all he wanted to do was go home, peel off his smart but now sweaty tux, and get into bed.

“Somewhere along the front of the school? Kinda where that old bus stop is. It’s yellow, so he’s more likely to find it in the dark.”

Blaine didn’t miss the implication in Travis’ words;  _my Dad’s a half-blind schmuck._ It was true. Travis’ dad wore round bottle-cap glasses at all times, and Travis often made jokes about it when he was with Blaine. 

They split off from the mass of students heading for the parking lot at the back of the school, their pace slowing to a stroll. The clean, sharp air cleared Blaine’s fuzzy head and cooled his warm cheeks as they walked side by side, their elbows occasionally bumping in a way that made Blaine’s pulse race for reasons he couldn’t really explain. Travis was a friend, nothing more. He didn’t like him like ‘that’. He didn’t. Besides, he already knew Travis liked someone else.

A breeze played around the lapels of his tux jacket, making goosebumps rise on his chest. It wasn’t particularly cold, but the difference in temperature between the gym and outside was enough to make him shiver as the yellow bus-stop came into view. 

The babble and chatter of over-excited high-school students died away as they reached the stop, taking shelter underneath from the breeze. They sat side by side on the cold metal bench to wait. 

“I had a good time tonight,” Travis said after a while. “It was nice. To go to a school dance…not with a girl.”

Blaine thought about this for a moment. He and Travis were the only two “out” guys at the school; as far as he knew, he and Travis  _were_  the only gay guys in the school, out or not. It had a tendency to paint a target on your back, especially in a conservative, small-town high school where almost everyone was white, Christian, and middle-class or lower. It was one of the reasons why they’d decided to go to the dance together. There was strength in numbers.

“I had a good time, too,” Blaine replied, giving Travis a small smile and feeling suddenly shy. 

“I was terrified, you know,” Travis continued. “Last night, I freaked out. I was going to call you and cancel. I thought, 'what if something happens?’ What if something bad happens to me, or to you - what then?” He took a long, deep breath, smoothing his hands over his pants. “I’m glad I didn’t, though.”

“Maybe we don’t have to be scared,” Blaine mused, staring at his high-polish dress shoes. “Maybe this’ll be a good thing for us. Being out…showing people that we’re the same as everybody else.”

“You see,  _this_  is why we’re friends,” Travis replied, his smile broader and more genuine now. “You’re wise beyond your years, Blaine Anderson.”

“You’re only two months older than me!” Blaine pointed out, laughing. “And besides, you came out first.”

“Only because of how brave  _you_  were,” Travis said, and something in the air shifted between them; Blaine suddenly felt very self-conscious, dressed as he was in a smart suit that didn’t quite fit his skinny fourteen-year-old frame. 

“I’m not that brave,” Blaine said quietly, scuffing his shoes along the gravel in front of him, something that his Mom would probably chastise him for later if it left a mark. 

The silence was broken by a loud, jeering laugh from somewhere behind them. 

A trio of men - Blaine assumed they were men, but he couldn’t see them properly in the dark - were walking in their direction, two of them stumbling slightly on the sidewalk that ran parallel to the front of the school. All three of them continued to laugh, pushing each other into the road, only to bounce back onto the sidewalk and begin the whole routine again. 

Travis was very still beside him. Blaine listened to the sounds of their laughing and their uneven footsteps, hoping that they would simply walk past them and away to wherever it was they were going. He was suddenly very conscious of the fact that most of the cars in the lot had gone; there were no students left to be picked up, and no parents left to do so. There was no sound except for those loud, loud laughs.

“Hey! Hey guys, look what we have here!” one of them yelled to his friends, and if Blaine had turned around at that moment he would have seen one of them pointing through the bars of the school gate, pointing right at him and Travis.

He didn’t turn around, however. He didn’t do anything. He sat completely still, the cold from the bench seeping through his pants and chilling him to the bone. Or maybe that was the fear that was creeping slowly through his veins, the voice at the back of his mind telling him,  _Run! You need to run!_

“Hey, fags! You having a good time?" 

More laughter. Most of the colour had drained from Travis’ face. 

"I was talking to you! Are you deaf?”

Laughter. Footsteps. The creak of metal and the scuff of boots. More footsteps. And then suddenly the three men are standing right in front of them, blocking the artificial light from the floodlamps that illuminate the lot at the front of the school, plunging Blaine and Travis into darkness. 

“I  _said_ ,” the biggest and tallest of the men said, slowly, as if he believed them to be very stupid, “are you  _deaf_ , faggot?”

“Don’t call him that!” Travis blurts, a knee-jerk reaction - and the wrong one.

“What are you, then, his boyfriend?” the man asked, turning his attention away from Blaine. “Well? Are you?”

Travis opened his mouth to give him an answer - and the man pulled back before slamming his fist into his cheek, knocking him sideways, spraying blood.

A strangled yelp made it half-way out of Blaine’s throat, but died when one of the other men dragged him off the bench by the lapels of his tux jacket, tearing the lining, and threw him to the ground, knocking the air clean from his lungs. He barely had time to groan in pain from the collision with the packed gravel before he was punched in the stomach, then on the nose, hard enough for blood to start pouring down his face and soak his lips, the taste of it making him gag and spit.

But the men weren’t finished. While one of them continued to punch him in the stomach, over and over again until his entire abdomen burned from the heavy blows, the third man came over and kicked him, making sure there was no way he could get himself up off the ground and run away. Not that he would have the strength or the courage to do so; while his mind screamed silently for help, begged for some kind of relief, he let his legs and arms go slack and simply lay there, hoping that they would stop soon.

He couldn’t see Travis, but he heard his whimpers and cries of pain, heard him retching and coughing, the gravel crunching under his weight as he tried to move out of the way of his attacker. 

There was blood on his face and his shirt and more on his hands where he’d scraped them on the gravel, but it was nothing compared to the  _pain._ A terrible, burning pain that spread through his stomach and chest and into his arms and legs, blooming along his jaw and cheekbones, pounding in his head. A boot landed on his temple, forcing him to turn his head sharply to the left, the tender skin there opening and more blood trickling out, staining his clammy skin.

Blaine couldn’t breathe. Every time he tried, his lungs screamed. The punches continued to come, stomach, face, chest, shoulders, a boot against the small of his back, propelling him forward, the pain shooting up his spine and making bile rise in throat. 

At some point, he simply gave up and began to sob, tears mixing with blood and stinging his wounds, the salt burning in the grazes along his jaw, not caring whether these men thought him childish or pathetic for crying openly. He didn’t care what they thought. All he cared about was whether they’d give up soon, walk away and leave them there, bloodied and helpless, and whether someone would find them and call 911. 

All he cared about was not being left to die here. 

**January 27th, 2008**

The lights were too bright.

They burned his eyes as he struggled to make sense of his surroundings, feeling cotton sheets underneath him and the the woollen blanket tucked under his chin, the jostling of wires and tubes where they snaked from his arms to several different machines and IVs filled with sedatives and morphine. 

He’d been unconscious for three days. 

He felt a warm hand on his cheek and the tickle of long hair against his neck, the smell of his mother’s perfume enveloping him as she bent in close and pressed her lips to his forehead. 

“Blaine,” she whispered, his name sounding like a prayer. “Oh, Blaine. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Experimentally, he smacked his lips, wetting them with his tongue before croaking, “It’s okay, Mom.”

“It isn’t okay,” his Mom replied, “You almost died. You could have been killed. I thought you had been, when the police showed up at the house to tell me you had been hurt…”

“Not dead,” Blaine managed to say. “I’m still alive. Mom, everything hurts…”

“It will, baby,” she said, pulling away to sit on the edge of the hospital bed. “It’ll hurt for a while. But the doctor says you’re going to be okay.”

The door of the room opened and a nurse came in, followed by a man Blaine assumed was the doctor. 

“Ah, you’re awake. That’s good,” the doctor said, smiling at him. He had glasses and greying hair. “Do you mind if I take a look at your injuries, Blaine? It won’t take long.”

“Um,” Blaine said, not entirely sure whether he was supposed to respond. Everything hurt too much to think. 

“It’ll only take a minute,” the doctor assured him. 

The doctor got to work on examining him, checking that the IVs were secure and that his vitals were normal. He poked and prodded the bruises and gashes, making Blaine squirm from the pain; but he kept silent, letting the doctor do his job, even though he felt like bursting into tears every time he pressed too hard on his mottled, blue-black-purple-yellow skin.

He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out everything around him; his Mom, the doctor, the nurse, the hospital room, the beeping machines, the framed prints on the walls, the chart at the end of his bed that said  _Blaine Devon Anderson, aggravated assault, multiple bone fractures, massive bruising, blood loss_.

And then he felt something sharp press into his arm, thin and piercing, and for the first time over seventy-two hours, he screamed. And kept screaming.

His eyes flew open, searching for the source of the pain, and his gaze landed on the nurse, who was holding a needle, which was halfway into the skin at the crook of his elbow, and he kept screaming because it hurt and because he was scared and because he didn’t want a needle in his arm and because he wanted his Mom and because he wanted to pretend that the last three days had never happened and that he’d never come out and that he and Travis hadn’t gone to the Sadie Hawkins dance and and hadn’t been attacked.

With his free hand, he reached out to force the nurse’s hand away, to rip the needle from the skin and throw it across the room, but he seemed to get stuck as soon as he made contact with her wrist, the signal sent from his brain to the nerves in his arm cutting out and leaving him grasping her wrist, his fingers contracting and making her wince.

“Let go of her, Blaine,” his Mom said, keeping her voice low, mellow. “It’s okay. She won’t hurt you. She just wants to take a sample of your blood, for some tests. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

He ignored her. His sole focus was on his grip on her wrist, wanting to make it as tight as possible, to make her pull away because it was too painful, so that he’d be left alone. 

It was as if all that fear, all that pain and anger, from the night he’d been attacked was manifesting itself in this one single act, an act he was determined to see through until he no longer felt threatened.

And then something extraordinary and terrifying and altogether quite indescribable happened. The nurse’s skin - it started turning blue.

Wide-eyed, Blaine watched as a purplish hue spread from the nurse’s chest to her throat and face, spread down her arms and into her fingers, like ink through water, her skin getting colder and colder and more clammy the more he held on, the pupils impossibly large in her narrow-set eyes, terror written there as her lips shrivelled to a pale pucker, her cheeks sinking inwards and her whole face going rigid. 

He had no idea what was happening. He had no idea how to stop it.

And then it did stop, as Blaine wrenched his hand from the nurse’s wrist and she collapsed, stiff as a board, her head hitting the floor with a hollow  _thunk_.

“Blaine,” his Mom whispered. “Sweetheart, what have you  _done?_ What did you do to that woman?”

“I-” Blaine began, the words getting stuck in his throat. He looked down in horror at his shaking hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers as if it would give him an answer, an explanation. “I don't  _know_.”

The doctor, having bent to look at her more closely, said, “She’s dead. Asphyxiation. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 _Dead._  The nurse was dead. Dead - and at his hand. 

He’d killed her with his bare hand, and had no idea how it had happened.

He’d killed her and didn’t even realize that that was what he was doing.

He’d killed her and now - what? 

His Mom came and put her hand on his shoulder, but he flinched at the contact, drawing himself away from her. It wasn’t safe for anyone to touch him, to be near him. Not if he could kill by simply putting his hand on them.

The doctor rose to his feet and adjusted his glasses.

“Time of death,” he said solemnly, to no-one in particular. “11:13am.”


End file.
